


Klarion and the Notgirl Girl

by 13LuckyWishes, catchandelier



Series: Snap Crackle Pop (The Walls are Breaking) [1]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Dark!M'gann, I am completly serious, Oh Dear, Other, ahahahahahaaaaaaaaaah myyyyyyyyyy baaaaaabiiiiiiiieeeeeeees, and neither is megan, but first they have to not kill each other for long enough to get to know each other, co-author 13luckywishes, dark au, don't call her M'gann, good lord is it from an rp, good lord this is dark, klarion is not what you think he is, no seriously this thing is dark, oh boy jesus, she doesn't like it, there will also eventually be shmoopy sappy goodness, this is from an rp, those tags are not for fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-27 00:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 13,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13LuckyWishes/pseuds/13LuckyWishes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/catchandelier/pseuds/catchandelier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about a boy who meets a girl. This is not a good thing. Because the boy is not a boy- because the girl is not a girl.</p><p>(Because both of them are lying liars who lie.)</p><p>OR</p><p>"We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shadows

* * *

Klarion had been keeping an eye on the Girl-who-was-NOT-a-Girl for quite some time. To do that, he hid himself in the space between spaces, where Shadows are three dimensional; he Watched her. He did not like what he saw. Not one bit.

(Like isn't a strong enough word.)

* * *

There was something there - maybe? Something slipping in and out of the shadows, that Megan could only sense for half a second before it was gone again. It was infuriating, like hearing a mosquito’s buzz but not being able to see it. The feeling grated and agitated the spots where she was already starting to wear thin, and it made her whole being tense up into something ready to snap.

 _Hello, Megan!_ Somebody sure needed to calm down! It was just because she hadn’t seen much of the Team lately, that was all! 

She’d

~~find them and make sure she never let them disappear like that again~~

just have to take a day off and go shopping! Ooh, and there was a new recipe she could perfect for when they got back,

~~and then poison it so they couldn’t so much as move after~~

and it just sounded delicious from what she’d heard! Baking, Megan! That’s your biggest problem right now!

* * *


	2. Reflections

It was strange, this not!girl-girl; she had come to his notice… oh, a while back. He had been on business of his own… nothing,  _bad,_  exactly, just… nothing he could talk about in polite company.

And while he was out, he saw her.

He  ** _smelled_**  her.

And she smelt of-  _of_  s _hadows under leaves and the cool sweet bitter tang of burning prickly fur soft and deadly sticky knots and tangles_  - something he only half remembered.

He isn’t aware of this racial half-memory of wars fought and won and lost against a hated foe- (and that memory isn't his, but that's later)- but he is aware of her. Of her shape that does not fit, and of the look in her eyes when no one is there, and of the way her green skin is not green but white like bleached bones with the red still dripping  ~~how can she be this beautiful and yet rotting away so quickly where is the justice of the world~~.

So.

He followed her- first through reflections, but  _that_  was dangerous for a number of reasons; reflections aren’t empty, after all.

So now… Shadows. Shadows and Echoes. They aren’t perfect, of course- no color, little smell- but. It’s better than the Reflections. (If she was quick enough, knew where and how and when to look, she could see him  ~~if she knew the right words she could catch him and lock him away where he would never see the stars again~~. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t want her to see him  ~~he knows exactly why he doesn’t want her to see him; until he has a plan of… attack, defense, doesn’t matter, he will not admit it to himself, because then he will have to do something about her. He is not ready for that… yet~~.)

He has watched her- and what he sees, he does not like.

She reminds him of his mother. His mother with the sweet words hiding bitter knives and the veneer of civility hiding a monstrous form. Surely this notgirl girl is not like that- but. His stomach and bones and claws and growling say that she is like that, on her way to being just  _exactly_  like that.

She reminds him of a spider- one still weaving it’s web. Something about her, something in her, is poison- maybe not often used. Maybe never used  ~~he hates to lie to himself, but he has seen her in action. Her special poison is to Erase. She is not something, someone to be taken on cavalierly~~. 

She reminds him of a doll with a beautiful face that he played with when he was a boy, and there was a frightening trick to it that his cousin (who he did not, does not like) showed him. Truly, it was a beautiful doll; exquisitely crafted from head to toe. Her dress was soft to the touch- her hair curled prettily. And her face was… changeable. They came in a velvet box, each in it’s own inset, and none of the faces were the same.

It was, to the boy he was, tantamount to discovering that the wonderful delicious fruit that he had eaten so gratefully was only so sweet because it was almost rotting. For a time, he could not play with the doll, hid it in his closet and dreamed that… and then he grew a bit, and realized that the doll was hollow, almost completely, on the inside. And he played a different game with the hollow doll with no face of her own.

He remembers that doll at the bottom of his mind, and doesn’t understand why the girl that is not a girl reminds him of such long forgotten things.

So. He watches. What for, he won’t admit.  ~~But he knows exactly why.~~  

* * *

Shadows start to close in.

It was just glimpses of things out of the corner of her eye, the kind that everyone imagines and forgets in a second because hah, the human imagination, always so overactive in the dead of night when instincts yell there’s something stalking from the dark.

Megan isn’t human, and Martian predators come from the fire and ice, but she  _is_ human now, even if she wasn’t born that way, so it’s a good sign. The Martian is finally becoming a woman. A girl. A sweet little girl, with all of her own little human fears.

Black things in mirrors, in sound when she’s alone in the Cave, contrasting shadows in shadows at night and midday, then everywhere at once during dawn and dusk when the world’s light and dark are all the same thing.

The black thing (just one) lurks sometimes and not always in all of those places and it feels like being watched.

Old memories of her own stir up, and it isn’t at all like living with only one or two others in her huge, spiraling ambassador’s-accommodation of a home, but it’s how she remembers it feeling and that’s really what matters. Megan is still alone because  **her whole team _left her and THEY’RE NEVER COMING BACK_** and one small nagging presence her human mind made up just won’t go away.

Megan Morse is perfect and happy, like Megan Wheeler was and Marie Logan wasn’t. She IS all pink skirts and headbands and catchphrases, perfect prim politeness and genuine smiles. Megan  _is_  because she studied it, because her parents were politicians, and in that world faking something well is just the same as being it.

Megan can feel Megan breaking while M’gann oozes out, and no matter how hard she tries to leave it alone the scab is rubbed raw by not just being  _watched_ , but all of it. Instead of dropping off one by one to go do more important things, they all realized what she was at once. Her family didn’t want to wait until they knew she was broken and worthless to not come when she needed them to. They’d sensed it and bolted when it was smart.

So Megan clings to Zatanna, who hadn’t realized yet she should have left

_You promised to go to the mall with me, remember? And you have to help with the toys, because it’ll just be so much fun! You’ll see!_

and wanders around all different cities, instigating fights and helping the ones who need it and twisting apart the ones she feels like might be interesting to watch snap. They ooze like her mind does, parts that should never meet bleeding into each other slowly and lethally.

_Which is such a silly thing to do in uniform! Even with bio-organic clothes, blood is always hard to get out of clothing!_

It festers and twists around until there’s a thin veneer of Megan stretched and pulled around something white and ugly and dangerous.

Maybe her insides were poking out like broken bones through skin this whole time, and it just took their absence to realize?

Then, one day, Megan M’gann? no Megan catches it. It isn’t just a shadow, it’s a shape. Something with a form, person-shaped, like she was, boy-shaped like she wasn’t good at yet. She only saw it when she stopped trying, like chasing spots in your vision ‘round and ‘round a room. Relax, let the senses just take in everything, and it will be there. Thinking you’ve let your guard down. It was a trick she’d picked up when masquerading among Mars’ sorcerer’s, so perhaps it wasn’t pure luck. Just the perfect blend of obsessively striving and giving up completely, the kind that would only work once.

And it flickers and disappears, but it’s still there. Driving her, not mad, she was already mad, so maybe driving her sane. M’gannMeganMeganM’gann (M’orzz?) can still feel the pair of eyes of her, picking away at scabs. 

So she turns on her brightest stretched smile and says hello.

“Hello, Megan! I knew there was someone there.”


	3. Curiosity

Klarion jerked up sharply. Somehow, she had seen him- or perhaps… his shadow.

(She had seen his shadow.)

_Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck her voice she can- No, she can’t. But… Okay, you can do this. All you have to do is… talk to a real live girl who will probably kill you and dispose of your body awww SHIT._

_  
_In later moments, going over this memory, Klarion would wonder- was this when he truly began to be his father’s son? Was this where it started?

(It doesn’t really matter- Klarion is his mother’s son, not his father’s.)

_*There aren’t many options here, Klarion.*_

_Yes, Teekl, I know._

_*Whatever you choose to do, quick is the operative word here.*_

_I know, I know… Thread fine and Breath soft?_

_*Mrr- only if you’re sure, Klarion. I’d reccomend you add a Mask, but…*_

_It’ll have to be my real Face with a Mask underneath, Tee. She’s too good at Pretending for anything else. And her Hearing is too good for us to stay Informed._

_*I do not like this dance of subterfuge and intrigue, Klar… But you have Duties, just as I. Happy Hunting, and Stay Alive.*_

Well. That’s that- Teekl knows where Klarion is, now- she has a suitable Lie to tell at Court should he… not return. It would be the easiest thing in the world to just… run. To run, and forget what he has seen; to fade back into the shadows and let the girl forget him, or at least never see him again.

Klarion doesn’t do things the easy way.  ~~He doesn’t necessarily do things the right way, either.~~  Anything he’s ever learned that’s stuck has been learned the hard way. And… He’s curious.

~~And the NotGirl Girl who might be called Megan is very, very beautiful.~~

_She can’t Hear me in the Shadow- so… The shy middle son who is a poet, and found a muse he couldn’t bear to be away from? Ye-es, but tread lightly, Chaos Lord- one false move, one mis-step, and she will know that you are not telling her the whole truth, which is tantamount to lying here, and she will go into you and find the truth for herself._

_~~And then you will be erased, and the only one who will mourn your passing is a cat/child/servant no one wanted except you, and what will They do to her should you die?~~   
_

_  
_Klarion glances around- marks the shadows and reflections, and if he absolutely must he can dive through the girl’s own shadow- the guard there will allow him passage but once… but that is more than enough to escape. And then, he allows himself to become… more distinct, more on her plane.

Shadows creep within shadows, and a boy shape resolves into… almost a boy. It is a boy in black, all spindly limbs and drifting edges; an expression of hesitant wary sweetness is on his face. (And Teekl had laughed herself sick when he practiced it in the mirror.) Slowly, slowly- shyly and carefully, quieter than breathing when asleep, than gases bubbling in a dead body, a boy- young man- steps out from the shadows.

He is lean, lanky, widows peak and vaguely asiatic features- his almond eyes catch the light redly for a moment, and then he blinks and his eyes are brown. His shoulders are held high and close, as if expecting a strike- his fingers are nervously twisting around each other. (That, at least, is not false.)

Klarion makes himself swallow- dry throat catches and scratches, and then he makes himself say “A-ah, H-hello… Megan, w-was i-i-it?” And then he waits.

Bait’s been laid- will she take it? Or will she kill him where he stands?  ~~And if he asks her nicely, and shows a pleasing face… will she let him… kiss her?~~

* * *

The living thing in the shadow, which until then she’d suspected might have been a shadow that was a living thing, reveals itself more easily than she’d have thought.

_It’s almost anticlimatic,_ Megan sighs to herself without caring, without allowing much emotion at all to bubble through to her bland surface. (It’s better self-control than she’s shown in days.)

The phrase “anti-climactic” comes to mind. A critical term she’d heard applied to one or two of  _Hello, Megan!_ ’s episodes, when she’d found a few on the internet who remembered it. Anti-climatic: An English word meaning “Something trivial or commonplace that concludes a series of significant events.”

Insubstantial black paints itself onto reality one layer at a time, slowly smearing from false to true opacity and solidity. A careful, deliberate process performed so hesitatingly Megan thinks the boy (not a child at all, but a  _boy_  only a little more truly than in the sense that she was a  _girl_ ) might even be afraid. The thought makes something white and slippery perk up and uncoil, but danger has come out of the shadows, a place humans fear, and so now is time for human self-control.

With more skill than she remembers it takes to perform such a feat, Megan doesn’t let the  **white**  bubble its way up to her true surface of soft pink clothes and pale peach skin. (To truly lie to another Martian without them knowing, one must hide the secret even from themselves. This is what Megan does, has been doing, and will always do to the things that rot in the back of her mind. She knows exactly what lies underneath her zips and layers, but does not acknowledge them. They do not form into real thoughts, and that is the general rule of how Megan stays herself.)

The boy seems to be finished smearing himself onto reality. His edges still flicker and are insubstantial. The girl isn’t sure whether that speaks for his otherworldliness or nerves.

A real response whines to be heard in her own mind, so Megan Morse recalls the term  _anti-climatic_  to the forefront of her thoughts.

He flickers, and smiles like a windup toy with its inner workings caught on its own metal and air, ready to burst into its real purpose at the slightest touch.

Anti-climatic. Most definitely.

**There isn’t even any screaming yet!** The bubble of thought floats quickly and stealthily to the surface before she cans stop it, and for only a second she lets herself see how many holes in her defenses have crumbled into being.

Then she is a simple, happy, wonderfully cheerful high school  ~~character~~ girl once again. A smile stretches across her human ~~-white~~  bones, and her eyes could not sparkle with more gentle, genuine ~~-seeming~~  warmth if she tried.

“You’re absolutely right! I  _am_  Megan Morse, but I guess that only means it’s fair to know who you are!”

**other than the damned soul who drove me down and away and I was playing so closely to the sun before you-**

The thought is murdered before it’s finished being thought, and Megan Morse shows no sign of compromise or disturbance.


	4. Dancing

_She’s smiling at me. Okay. I can work with- oh fuck._

_  
_Klarion is trying very hard not to scream. Now that he’s here, almost where She is, he can see her shadow. And her shadow is… _too thick;_  there are some whose blood she wore, and now they follow her and wait- Oh yes, there are  **consequences**  for all actions. Klarion knows this fact well.

The notgirl girl who calls herself Megan… does not.

Klarion forces his attention on the girl-  ~~that’s not a girl and I am not a boy but lies only work when they are neither Spoken or Heard~~ \- on Megan.

Red hair- not the true red of blood-drenched dawn, but copper and brown. Dull. Pink sweater set, skirt, white socks. Drab. Grey-green eyed girl with freckles, a smile  _so_  genuine. Plain. And in this shape, she strives to be… Ordinary. (The hunter in him admires her camouflage.)

“You’re absolutely right! I  _am_  Megan Morse, but I guess that only means it’s fair to know who you are!” That, more than any of his observations- that gives her lie away. He smells her words- and she believes what she is telling him… mostly. She knows, feels, that she is not what she says she is, but she wants with such  _desperation…_

~~And he saw the monster lurking behind her eyes, waiting, screaming to get out; poor girl is denying who she is. Doesn’t she know liquid things under pressure always explode when their stress limit is reached?~~

And there are things in her head- she stinks of rotting and blood, of nightmares. Of deceit most disturbing, covered over with sugar sweet and sickly. (And that’s an angle he’d never thought to explore- but… Later.)

Right now, she wants to have a name to call him by- he doesn’t have to answer her, and she told him… one of her names. He can always just leave and watch from afar now but- No. So- something that he can answer to quickly, but not  _actually_  his name…

~~Aha.~~

A short breath in, and then… “I am called Klarion Sagapuer; i-it is a p-pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms. Morse.”

There. Not once did he lie. He even told her the truth- he is- well, technically, was- called Klarion Sagapuer. Not a single lie.

Just… not the whole truth.

With a titanic effort of will, Klarion forces himself to come almost completely onto Megan’s plane- because there are ghosts (onryos and jumbies and worse) in her shadow and their vengeance has all the time in her life to wait- Death’s lands are different from Life’s. Time is meaningless there- and while She might not remember,  _they will._

They will wait an eternity- longer; and if he is not very careful, they will turn to him, first.  ~~Turn on him, first; there is no helpful girl who can kill the dead with him now.~~

Shadow boy steps out of shadow- becomes flesh, bone, breath, blood; his shadow remains… wispy, at the edges. Because he isn’t from here.  ~~Because he still might need to run away, very fast.~~

~~  
~~She took what was offered- give her the illusion of power. And Klarion has a name for a face- nevermind if it is or isn’t real.

* * *

(She's spent too long inside her head, forcing herself into a shape doesn't fit, can never fit- will never ever ever no matter what she does and who she kills and how fast she runs and hides, never ever will she be anything other than what she is; had she been more herself, she wouldn't have dismissed herself warning herself.)

* * *

He hears, pauses, mentally stutters, flawlessly answers. Only then does the boy anchor himself to reality - wait, no,  _Hello, Megan!_  He came out of the shadows, so pay attention to  _his_! It’s still fuzzy around the edges, still bleeding through the thin paper of reality back to where he belongs.

Now that he’s more clearly defined, Megan can see that the boy is all triangles and sharp points where the ends meet. It’s jarring to have the Thing in the Shadows, one that for a very long time she’d only felt  _existed_ , be so. Real? Present? Sharp enough to slice her own thin, human skin on? With so many definite, classifiable features she could pick apart and compare to a human being. Being able to do that feels wrong somehow,  ~~like the monsters in the world should be as indefinite as the ones in her head.~~  

Megan searches for a lie in all of the human ways - flickering of the eyes, maybe a specific jerk in his fingers where he’s still playing with his own hands, a lilt in the voice. A silly thing to do, really! Only happened at all because she lives with humans now, and they all have their own pitfalls and physical tells. A silly thing to do because he’d spoken something true. She’d lived among well told lives (lieslivesblurring together in weaving waves) and the psychics who used them for decades, plenty long enough to simply know, though maybe with a bit of invasion of privacy. Megan feels his mind agreeing with his mouth, and as an added bonus he has no obvious physical tells. This  ** _thing_**  really is-

“Klarion,” Megan states, and clasps her hands in front of chest enthusiastically. “It’s wonderful to meet you too! Please, call me Megan!” Her voice starts low and slowly climbs up with each word, like Megan Wheeler’s did when she was excited,and like Megan Morse’s usually does. But for now that small fact is acute in her mind and makes some part of her (just benevolent to not be squashed on conception) whine in discomfort.

Megan believes Klarion even though his mind is guarded with wards, kinds she hasn’t quite seen before. Nothing the girl can’t get past if she decides to. Even from this distance, with him still not all there, and even without more than brushing his mind, Megan can feel the places where she could flick and tickle and tear them through like untender meat. The defenses are different, not dangerous, but they interest her nonetheless.

“So tell me, Klarion! Why are you here? I can’t say I’m all that interesting, myself,” a lie, but  one used for the sake of modesty. Everyone loves Megan Morse because she doesn’t think too much of her absolute perfection. “but you picked a funny way to accomplish finding anyone else!” Megan’s big, soft eyes meet his sharp triangular ones, and she feels the familiarity of them on her. Megan is not annoyed,  ~~she does not feel the grate of being _ **stalked**_ **by some shadow boy,**~~ but she sure is curious!


	5. Failure

_~~Oh fuck why is she touching me fucking shit that’s gross gnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaarrgh~~ _

_Oh god she wants me to call her Megan that’s really forward of her- Pull it together! You can talk to a girl! At the very worst, she’ll just say no- for once in your life, take a fucking chance!_

_~~HOLY SHIT SHE’S STRONG OW OW OW WHY IS SHE STILL TOUCHING ME FUCKING HELLS~~ _

_okay, now… HOW DO YOU TALK TO GIRLS **WITHOUT**  CHAPERONES OH GODS THIS WAS A BAD IDEA FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK_

_WHY ARE YOU SO BEAUTIFUL GODS WHY_

_OH GODS SHE’S LOOKING AT YOU SAY SOMETHING YOU STUPID ASSHOLE CRAAAAAAP_

_OH GODS WHAT DO I EVEN SAY TO HER SO I DON’T SEEM LIKE MORE OF A FREAK_

_  
_“U-um- Ms. Megan- I was… wondering… if you would, um, perhaps… like to… um, that is, well… go out? Sometime? With me, I mean? I mean- I know we just met, and all, and that I’ve been, well- a creeper, what with the… the stalking, but I, well, I- I just… I think you’re very… beautiful, a-and I was- gosh, you must think me a fool for even- but I just wanted to… ask…” Klarion’s voice is a hesitant murmur- a shade or two sweeter than his normal register, deeper than he’d ever go for fun. His eyes are wide, earnest, hopeful- and he is not looking her directly in the face, but from the side, like a shy boy getting ready to be cruelly rebuffed. (Klarion knows what it is to be shy and cruelly rebuffed, and can feel himself steeling for the rejection, and then there will be blood and knives and pain and screams and oh dear.) His arm is across his stomach, nervously gripping his arm. (It feels very odd, to be so… uncertain, unconfident, in himself, his actions. Klarion is not sure he likes it.)

_Holy crap that was the worst thing that’s ever come out of my mouth why would I even say something like that fuck and damn she’s going to think I’m a freak I am a freak fuuuuuuuck_

~~_SHIT SHIT SHIT WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING I MEAN I WOULDN’T MIND TAKING HER OUT BUT FUCK IF SHE ISN’T SCARY_ ~~

~~_OH HELLS WHAT IF SHE SAYS YES WHAT THEN FUCKTARD WHY DID I EVEN SAY THAT TO HER FUUUUUUUUUCK_ ~~

_Oh gods why did I say that I meant to make a conversation not just blurt it out stupid stupid stupid aaaaaarrrrrrgh_

_Which would have been easier by approaching her like a boy from her world- I don’t know how to do that, but I could have taken the time to learn FUCK I’M A TOTAL STUPID IDIOT FUUUUUCK_

Klarion is panicking- but only just enough to make himself seem real. (Not even he knows how much of his actions are meant to deceive. Perhaps that is why he is so good at what he does.) Sadly, most of it really is due to limited dating experience. But some of it is due to the girl.

(Some Girl.)

And the monster inside of Klarion- everyone has one- senses notgirl Megan’s interest, and smiles a smile of too many teeth.  _ ~~Happy Hunting indeed. Who says inner beauty doesn't exist?~~_

* * *

He hears, pauses, mentally panics, stutters an answer. For the first time in a very long time Megan goes with her first instinct - a real instinct, a response that actually came from the natural dark and deep and kept-quiet places of her mind. An honest-to-goodness  _kneejerk reaction_ is what one of her friends might call it, and it shoots its way up through layers and layers of other unthinkable things like a healthy sprout.

The sprout isn’t frozen back into nothing because, well, Megan Morse is _allowed_  to laugh. Not loud, and not for long, but true and honest laughter all the same.

Novel.

Megan Morse, in her current incarnation, has never once honestly laughed. Something like that began and ended at a meaningless giggle, maybe, that grew and died in her throat like a shallow-rooted flower blossoming in the wrong season.

This laughter is - something that comes from the stomach, that makes her whole body shake and her shoulders roll back. Eyes crinkle, red mouth stretches back to bare white hard teeth, and the  _sound_ that comes out is neither high nor clear, not dainty, plasticine, or practiced.

Megan jerks her hands back to herself immediately, but only uses them to politely cover her mouth after a few seconds have passed and the worst of it is out. By then she is fully back to herself, because the longer that is spent in this shadow-dweller’s presence the more seamlessly _Megan_  returns to power. It is the opposite of being chipped away at by monsters in the dark. It’s an adrenaline rush that’s useful, and that doesn’t feel to have a time limit (even if there’s no question that there is, in fact, a moment where the awful feeling of crumbling has to come back worse than ever. The longer the boy stays the worse it will be, later. But Megan has never been one for long-term planning, and the longer he stays the longer it will be put off).

Finally and entirely back to herself, Megan primly flips back over one shoulder a curtain of red hair that had fallen in her face. Her next words are honey-sweet, with all the human inflection of genuine sentiments but none of the real conviction.

“Klarion,” and a little bit of residual laughter echoes through his name. The poor boy. “I’m flattered that you find me - beautiful.” Something she never was before becoming, finding who she is in, Megan. He seems to really mean his words, and it calls up the same detached amusement caused by Kid Flash’s early attempts at flirting. (None of the affection, though; this thing is not and has no hope of ever being a part of her family.)

The laughter came from the initial shock. The sudden idea that the Thing in the Dark had all this time been an otherworldly being with a crush, that all the the  _scraping_ and  **clawing** damage he’d done had been unintentional. Maybe that the slow departure of her Team had been a coincidence, too. Maybe they’d even be back. The laughter was - relief, maybe. A pressure valve releasing some of its load, because that whole idea makes everything so much better and worse than before-

But.

There are cold and practical parts of her mind, the ones carefully raised up above all of her own petty turmoil. They note that he has been watching all candid sides of her for quite a long time now, and very likely before she first sensed it. Shadow dwelling takes skill, even Megan knows that, and what she  _is_  can only be painfully obvious to the most dense of the clever by this point. (Perhaps all the details are not be quite clear to him yet. Hopefully?  _Hah_ , hope.)

Even having spent all this time among humans, in a culture where beauty has meaning because it cannot be gained with an easy force of will, the entire situation stinks of wrongness. The idea that something,  _anything_ , would go to such lengths out of attraction for her simple, biped, bizarre little human body is, pardon the pun,  _alien._ Absurd. Most importantly, highly unlikely. There are many, many more physically attractive humans in the world, and almost all of them are entirely less deadly.

After that are only the substantial things; her mind, her heart, her soul. In other words, there is not a whiff else to love. Nothing to find beautiful, not even before she broke (was broken).

So. He must be lying. It is odd, because Megan can  _feel_  the truth to his words, but maybe that is part of the structure of his mind, those defenses she is so unused to. Maybe his thoughts are radically different from what she thinks they are, and the sheer newness of the wards is enough to muddle the difference between reality and falsehoods.

Megan has been having a lot of long days, lately, so maybe it’s just that her own definition of reality is too twisted. Maybe there’s nothing she can use to compare potential lies against, anymore.

“But I’m afraid I’m simply not interested in, um, ‘going out’ with you? I don’t think you’re a fool at all! But it probably wouldn’t be a very good idea.”

The rush of empowerment towards  _Megan_ against anything _other_ is at an all-time high. Rage and vengeance and the desire to claw through him to find out what he really wants are only murmurs now. Pure, irrational intellect take their place, and it always is so much more interesting to find things out the traditional way. Robin always says they should work on their detective skills, after all!

If she fails she can just find out with her more natural methods when the time comes!


	6. Laughter

_She’s laughing. She’s laughing at… **me.**  Oh. Okay- how I was expecting anything else, I’ll never know._

Klarion allows a hot rush of shame to slither through him- lets tears prick at the corners of his eyes.  ~~He wants to hurt her, for the insult to him. Klarion is known throughout his lands for being able to tell a sincere request from a false one; he has to, or face ruin at the hands of the greedy. He truly likes her, or something that looks like affectionate lust at the edges (it isn’t);~~  He really would have liked to go on a date with her- obviously, she feels differently. As she laughs, he lets his edges grow more indistinct, lets himself fade back into the shadow from whence he came. He seems to undergo a shrinking- a cat gone shy in a room of too many hands wanting to touch.

His blood races in his ears- his muscles shiver and tremble with suppressed action.  _She’s so beautiful- I wish I could get her to do that more often, but… I don’t think she wants me around- hah, like that’s new! I guess… I guess have to go back-_

_(to endless loneliness and knowing that no one wants you around, not even your sister; to hours of study and no reward, to magic that you cannot use for fear of reprimand, even though it’s the only magic you can do without hurting something someone yourself; to endless waiting for nothing- doors slammed in your face and coldness from the one who calls you “son” and nothing nothing nothing to do; to boredom and screaming hidden in the walls of your life; death in the bright places so you came here to hide away, snuck away into the shadows like a good little freak, found a little used path in the woods- and saw her. And she was **bright**  and **gleaming**  but also deadly just like the girls at home, yet so much more… better, somehow.  **Bright, gleaming** but so familiar, recognizable- a knife sharp and clean and brightly glinting and so so very beautiful.) - Home._

_It’s not like I can stay here. (And why would the beautiful sharp smart girl ever want a little shadow freak who can’t even pretend to be someone who isn’t a failure? And why would the little shadow freak think that the beautiful gleaming girl would appreciate his advances? What presumption! What nerve!)_

_~~There has to be a way to get her to let me closer; since my crush was rebuffed… perhaps a friendship? Or at least an aquaintance… that isn’t going to work. Fuck.~~ _

“But I’m afraid I’m simply not interested in, um, ‘going out’ with you? I don’t think you’re a fool at all! But it probably wouldn’t be a very good idea.”

_I am a fool. She’s the beauty I dreamed of- and she doesn’t even…_

_Maybe… maybe, if I ask her… we could be friends?_

_I am a **fool.**  
_

At those words, Klarion slowly… slowly stops fading away. He can’t quite make his gaze leave the floor- can’t make his shoulders come down, can’t make his back un-slump in dejection. His voice is wavery- not quite tearful, but that could be because he’s more than half back to his world; or it could be because he doesn’t want to cry in front of his crush. (Could be both.)

“I understand… th-that y-you don’t w-want… w-well, since y-you aren’t.. I… c-could we be… I-I mean to s-say… Ms. Megan, could w-we try… friendship?”  _She won’t want that from you either. Best just to leave now and never return. ~~You have a face, a name, and an Impression; you don’t need more. You have what you came for; but fuck, I don’t want to leave.~~  I still hope…  **hah,**  hope._

_(If she doesn’t want me as a friend, there’s no reason for me to stay. I’ll just have to go back… **home…** )_

_  
_Klarion waits for her reply to his hesitant question- hovering there, more than half vanished, barely real at all. A shadow. A boy- young man. (And if the notgirl girl hasn’t realized that he’s not what he appears to be, someone is lying to themselves.)

* * *

Klarion startles back into the shadows like a kicked animal, a response not quite anticipated, but fully expected. The emotions slither off of him in puffs and waves, like a smell, something that can’t be avoided without holding your breath. Megan breathes it in because deprivation has always been one of her weak spots, even if she’d rather not have to echo feelings like sadness or anger or embarrassment (or happiness or amusement or… what was another  _good_ feeling, again? In any case, they’re just opposite sides of a spectrum, one no less dangerous from the other. The only difference being that the latter side isn’t one she’s liable to face at the moment).

Klarion the Thing in the Shadows starts to blur at the edges again, retreating to home like an injured child. Other thoughts, more specific than broad emotions, play across his mind, but there are more reasons than thoughts to reach as to why they’re out of her grasp. Megan would like to reach them, would like to make him  _stay_  until she can, one way or another, find out what they are.

**He wants something.**

But whatever could it be? He was there for quite a long time, and disappointment and injury is never a guarantee he’ll leave again!

**This is the pair of eyes that nicked and clawed and scraped from the Dark, and she wants to know _why_  before she destroys it.**

Uh oh, looks like somebody needed to take a couple quick breaths!

“Ms. Megan, could w-we try… friendship?”

Oh. Well then!

Screw all of that.

Maybe it was the emotion already pouring off of him, unchecked and infecting her mind. The despair and the dread and the bitterness, uncomfortably familiar. Scraping at all of the holes in the dyke already there, and no little Dutch boy to plug all the holes. (No little Earth girl to smile loudly enough to drown out the sound of leaking water.) Perhaps it was just the cliche that caught her off guard, a line that she’d fully expect to hear stuttered out of a  _Hello, Megan!_  oneshot character.  _Of course we can be friends,_ then a lesson is learned and he is never seen again.

A trap, then. A bizarre last-minute attempt to spew as many cliches as possible, to draw out Megan and make her open to conversation just a little bit longer.

The words have the opposite effect, and somewhere a delicate balance tips. Any psychic in a ten mile radius could probably hear the  _snapping_ sound, like a rubber band reaching its stretch limit. Something insubstantial changes in Megan’s whole being, and she goes from being genuine to terrifyingly plasticine in a second. No more human warmth in her eyes or smile or laced fingers - warmth is dangerous because she is Martian, with a thin layer of Human (Green, everything good) stretched over.

Her tone holds all of the right highs and lows and pitches to sound right, just like studying her body language reveals nothing odd. That does not keep it all from smelling like a rotten thing.

Of course, the words themselves don’t help much either.

“I think that I have never heard a worse idea than a friendship between us!” Her eyes begin to glow White, and her skin melts to Green, and it is a blessing the Cave is empty. “In fact, I’d love to know what you really want.”


	7. Fury

“In fact, I’d love to know what you  ** _really_**  want.” Her voice echoes about the empty cave- sugar sweet lies, all just for him.

How flattering.

Klarion allows himself a moment of dark unfettered joy- this is what had attracted him, after all. That rage- that defensive posturing that could go too far so very quickly. That… power.  ~~She’s even more beautiful from the front. Gods, she’s going to seriously ventilate me pretty soon.~~

_Oh thank the gods. No more pretending. ~~At least… not out Loud.~~_

~~  
~~“Hmm- Why, Ms. M-e-gann, whatever do you mean?” His voice is a high, hissing rasp; a sibilant gesture of, not exactly maturity- certainly closer to his real voice than anything the Notgirl has heard today.

(He knows the name the Notgirl tried to forget- one of the first things to show up in his research, how could he not know it? ~~It reminded him of things long forgotten, ages long past.~~  And he had seen what happened to those who used it- and that anger had bred the monsters in her shadow waiting for her to die. Tch. Sweet girl; doesn’t know the hazards of doing things in emotion- doesn’t know how many mistakes she’s already made. Her little sorcerer girl is weakweakweak- a few centuries and maybe she’d have some sting, but now? Pfft. Klarion could easily squish-squash her beneath his bootheel and be done and gone before she even knew the danger. The sorcerer girl’s sire, well… Who says Klarion’s the only Lord of Chaos in the world?  _Klarion’s_  sire is still alive and well- and much more powerful, much as it rankles to admit.

Point being- she’s let him in her House. She let him materialize on this plane- door’s always there, now, and the pressure of monsters and nasties from his side will always hold it shut. She could slip in underneath the jamb if she really wanted- of course, he routed the road back to his Realm through the Dreaming. The Dreaming will let those shadows become real- and there are so very many.

He can leave and return anytime he wants- and if she tries to follow, she’ll have to fight an army of her own making.)

Klarion lets the persona of the shy stuttering boy with confused feelings go- perhaps he could have made it work, but that would have just been boring;  ~~she didn’t believe it anyway, even though he was being completely honest. He’s never really seen the point in Lying anyway; after a certain point, it just becomes meaningless drivel. _Ever_  so much more fun to let others tie themselves up strangle break on his very clearly and carefully worded statements. ~~Klarion is not a boy- he cannot die like a boy, not as long as Teekl remembers him; he made sure, before he came and… bearded the dragon… that his familiar would be safe- well, safe enough- from the notgirl’s spidery clutches. 

“I’ve already  _told you,_  what, exactly, I wanted- a single afternoon spent with a lovely girl. It’s not exactly  ** _my_**  fault she didn’t want to go- free will, and all that.”

~~He can feel her becoming closer and closer to the monster he knows her to be; can feel the cold death waiting for him under rapidly thinning ice. If he were Teekl, he would have said “Sorry to bother you” and left; he isn’t Teekl. Klarion has always loved to court Death. And where he comes from, jumping on thin ice is the easiest way to show off skills. (And if you should die, well; good riddance to useless trash.)~~

Klarion lets his blood and flesh and bone and shape flow away- only a suit of clothes, easy enough to change- becomes smoke and shadow again, no real mind to speak of, just a coil of emotions held together by will and habit; no great loss if that tie is snapped either, he’d just return from whence he came. (And should she follow him, well- he’s been bored for ever so long…)

“Besides- if I thought you could lose control  _this_  easily, well… I certainly wouldn’t have wasted so much of my time.”

_What makes you think you’re so important? I think you’re beautiful- but what makes you think you’re special?_

_~~I wonder how long it will take for you to really try to kill me? And how is your Lie serving you now, Little Girl?~~ _

* * *

A high keen fills the air, pitch-perfect kettle ready to boil over. It isn’t heard so much as  _felt_  by every living thing nearby, and the tingling tang of thick, white-hot-ready-to-explode  _fury_ vibrates soul-deep. Birds and fish and insects all duck for cover as far away from the source as they can get, and if the two weren’t truly alone before? They certainly are now.

“Don’t _call_ ** _me THAT.”_**

Those are the only words that are truly spoken (that being, out loud and with a mouth), ripping out of two small human lungs with a painful cry that stairsteps into a scream. Neither is less angry than the other.

Underneath the spoken are endless pangs and sentiments that never take form into words, but erupt upward, out of her smallsmall chest mouth into a voice that  _can’t_  be Megan Morse’s any more and into a room filled with empty, vibrating air. No one, not even if they tried, could miss the result of the way the hole in her smooth cover rips open, loud and jagged and ugly.

_goawaydon’tcomebackI’mMeganMeganMeganyoudon’tgettocallmeanythingelse this_ is _who I am and you’ll_ ** _die for saying otherwise_** _._

A few, if they tried very hard, could feel the fear underneath and all tangled up in the rage; it’s a sticky sour thing that’s always been there, hidden. (Megan ignores that it may not be very hard to guess at, ignores it because if she doesn’t than it will become real, and palpable as the acerbic white-hot tingle that’s taken over everything.)

~~((Fewer, almost none, if they knew what sparks and then tried to look, would notice that there is far, _far_ too much  **fire** infecting Megan’s fallen charade. More Burning than any Martian alive has the right to be able to access. Were the right Powers That Be present, Megan would be ordered to destruction on the spot. But the Guardians of the Universe have no business personally being on Earth.))~~

She still doesn’t know what boy-from-the-shadows wants or why he’s there; none of his other words mattered. Not after he  _accused_  her of being something less than human. But the pretense of innocence and genuine interest finally falls away, just before his discarded husk of a body does. That husk melts away into nothing (nothing she can see, remember that it may still be there), and suddenly much, much more becomes clear. She is a girl, but that thing  _is not a boy_. Megan, maybe for the moment shoved into a bright pink suitcase to be ironed out later, is far more human than he.

Perhaps Klarion thinks turning into a coil of his own mind will make an escape route, a tactic to make it harder to be grabbed and shredded. He’s a fool to think it makes him any safer.

Miraculously (but not, because not-Megan has seen plenty, and she is still alive; instinct alone can be useless in a war), her stone pedestal is still high above the riptides, unbroken and un-hazed. It comments much too quietly to be ignored that this… thing, whatever he is beneath the layers of lies, is no fool at all.

So, she does not touch him. It would be  _so easy_ to reach out and grab his memories, to rifle through them until she understand him better than he does himself. Then she'd smash them, one by one, like valuable mirrors, or maybe leave them intact and only scar the emotions so badly he’ll never sleep again.

Megan can recognize a trap when she sees one, so she doesn’t endanger the two-way door that comes with psychic warfare. The keen has not stopped, though, and now it picks up frequency. Anything foolish enough to still be nearby would be shaken and twisted and popped by the twang tang tingle scorch of it, then have nightmares forever. Even Megan feels it ripping through her (and this, children, is why your parents say not to bottle emotion; it will hurt everyone, including yourself. Only if you do it, it will not give you superpowers), and her smile will not  _feel_ right to anyone who sees it for months.

All this time, it must be noted, her face does not change. The last effort she put into her body was  _before_ her name was turned into a lie, and she no longer has the attention or energy to spare for mimicking emotion.

Instead, her expression has defaulted to what it is most commonly; the most welcoming smile anyone ever did see fixes itself on the opposite wall.


	8. Memory

Klarion the Witch-boy is uncountably old. There are things that he has seen that defy all explanation. There are people he has met, and toyed with, and killed, that in today’s parlance would be considered gods. (He has played in the shadows of the ones without End.)

Klarion the Witch-boy is the newest of many many names that he has held- for in the beginning, he had no name. (He didn’t need one. All those who Burned knew of the Bloodshadow Flesheater.) Klarion the Witch-boy is actually a pretty serious misnomer; a more accurate rendering would be:

Clarion Which Boy

Clarion, as in brilliantly clear.

Which as in Which one?

(The boy is contested in many circles- suffice to say, he’s much more of a boy, than he is, oh, say, a turnip.)

And he was born from the shadow of blood spilt on a burning planet, in ages long past.

 

All this to say- Klarion has seen more things than can be imagined, and he is old. He doesn’t look, or act it- but he is. He has a file, on Oa, locked and bound from all but the highest of the highest echleons, that is comparable to Lobo’s- and the warnings held within that file are much much worse. After all, if you get in Lobo’s way, he’ll just kill you; if you get in Klarion’s way, he will make you suffer.

So, when the notgirl girl spider girl burning burning Burning BURNING

begins

to

Sing…

(A high keen fills the air, pitch-perfect kettle ready to boil over. It isn’t heard so much as felt by every living thing nearby, and the tingling tang of thick, white-hot-ready-to-explode fury vibrates soul-deep.)

(How alive can ~~a demon~~ he actually be?)

Klarion’s memory, filled with horrors and wonders unimaginable, pops up what exactly this… Megan… must be. There only one thing she can be- except, of course, they were all destroyed. Then again, Blood will out.

  
(The thing about being older than old is… you get changed. By all that **time,** pressing squishing stretching you out and **flattening** you and **Klarion** is **not** the same little scrap of shadow that rose from the light of a Burning world from blood spilt in fear and the psychic echo of a dying scream and fed and grown on the hatred and death that festered there; **not** the same little creature that ate the flesh of the dead on the plains of battle and looked with the eyes of red red burning; and **not** the same little creature that looked into the endless black of the night and saw the stars, shining so brightly and wondered if perhaps there were others like it out there and left that burning burning Burning red world and sought others like it- and it found other’s like it

and it fought

and it was strong

and it learned many many things

(and no one showed it kindness

and it learned many many things

and none of them good)

and then it sought to return to the only home it had ever known

but it wasn’t there

and the only ones it had ever known were gone

and Changed

and it cried and cried and cried

and then it turned it’s gaze to the blue world

and it went there; **not** the same little scrap of shadow that became a boy in the courts of the Fey.

 **Klarion** is **Klarion.)**

 

The keen has not stopped, though, and now it picks up frequency. Klarion knows this sound. He made it when he returned from the endless night and the empty dark to find that the warm and beautiful home he knew was gone.

He’s made this sound. And he remembers-

How scared he was. _How scared she is_.

How alone he felt. _How **alone** she is._

He’s made this sound. He wanted then, someone to make that sound with him- _but she **needs** someone to make that sound with her._

He begins to Sing.

(And the world goes quietly incandescent. And Klarion remembers, now- the hated enemy was never his, only his adoptive families’.)

And as Klarion Sings, he returns M’gann ‘s vapid smile. (All this to say- M'gann _cannot_ kill Klarion; and there is only so much she can do to him before she stops being of Interest to him. And then... the part of Megan that is Megan will be in his way.)

* * *

 

Megan’s mind is layered like this:

Pale pink sugar sweet cover (coverlet, maybe? It sounds so much cuter!) pulled over the top.

Sticky and sickly underside, to make sure it sticks to the rest.

Hard-baked, not reality (because it isn’t acknowledged, and therefore  **isn’t** ), but… still all the hard things that make up the mind. All the dry-cut thoughts and memories, knowledge and places to think. There is a white house there, with an even whiter picket fence, a bright green yard, and soft pink shutters. (There are tunnels underneath, red and cold and faraway, that twist for miles on end.) Most of it crumbles at little more than a touch, and there are cracks and crags in the ground you could fall into before you ever saw them, just because they can’t be seen. (Megan does not walk in her own mind; she flies, or flits with all the weightlessness of a cheerleader.) 

That place is hard and crumbling because all the  _life_  has been sucked out, found to be rancid and drained down to the bottom. Putrid White seethes below, squelched hard between a mind and the pressing-up Emptiness that’s always holding up everything.

By all rights, Megan’s mind should have crumbled long ago. Nothing, nothing Human or Martian anyway, can hold together without liquid in it somewhere (without life in it). And the hard-baked place has splintered as it should, **_crac_** ** _ked_** , lacerations spinning out in all different directions like a spiders’ web. They go wide, and long, but most importantly  **deep.** Deep enough to slice all the way through, down into the roiling liquid, then even deeper, cutting a pathway right through to the Empty.

Any other mind would have fallen apart at the seams, and drifted back into nothing.

Megan Morse is one of the most powerful (if unskilled) Martian telepaths of her time. She keeps her own mind sewn together, thank-you-very-much.

(The wisest races know many things; one of them is that you never, ever dig too deeply. Between the core of a planet and Nothing is where the nastiest things dwell, and what is our universe but a series of fractals?)

Always, but for Megan especially, things lurk in the Empty. Beneath the sugary sweet and the hard dry and the screeching wet is the greatest Martian fear of all.

There is Fire.

And as the White wet squirms up to where it used to be, all through the hard-baked, then staining the perfect coverlet of Megan Morse, something else is (finally?) allowed to spark up and slink its way up through the deep, deep cracks. It spreads through everything, making her whole mind warmer and brighter, but in no way  _nicer_. Then the Burning feels the pressure of pure, pent-up emotion pushing it out, out into the real world beyond. And the air fills up and rattles with the sound.

The ancient, unnatural-natural instinct to flee in terror goes still.

M’gann M’orzz (not at all Megan anymore; this is a thoroughly Martian affair) does not realize it, yet. Has no idea that she is the first in eons to sing this song.

All she knows is that this is the high, thin, strong thing she has heard in the back of her mind since even before her father tried- it has been there, keening louder with each new pocket of an identity she ripped open in order to wear. Gnashingly pleading to stretch closer to the point of. Of  ** _something_**.

(She is at that point, now.)

Rattling, beginning underneath her core and flickering upwards, is all M’gann feels. M’gann is, against her better judgement,  **feeling.**  White Burning fury tinged with other things she hasn’t acknowledged before and won’t begin to now. There is no stopping it, and she does not try, but she doesn’t have to name it either.

If nothing else, this release will force the shadow-not-boy to go away and leave her completely alone. (That is to say, not alone at all. Not inside her own mind.)

Klarion does not leave, and her Song. Echoes back? It doesn’t make any true sound; it cannot echo, so-?

_He is smiling back at her._

And M’gann does not stop. Would, under any other circumstances, but by now simply can’t. The ringing, keening (singing? Yes, that feels right) singing started as a trickle out of a dam and escalated into something completely unexpected; it Burns through from her tiny human toes to her small, squished head. It calls for a form even more primal than the instincts calling for White and Long, though it does so faintly as the _old,_  Burning blood that’s still in her veins.

Maybe, if she had been alone, the song would have reached the highest possible pitch and hurtled abruptly to a stop. Like any tantrum begins and ends. M’gann, not alone, can’t bring herself to even consider caring what is reciprocating. Only that she hears a response.

Satisfaction, like scratching an itch that before now had been infuriatingly intangible as a floater in the eye ( ** ~~scratch it out~~** ), Burns with the Song, gushes out with her White, rancid innards. It is a song of unnamed (but real) emotion, of release. Of. Companionship. (It is not so important to have someone who understands enough to tell you how to get out of the muck, as someone who will sit there with you and listen. Who or whatever that someone is.)

Thought may come back later, and logical mistrust and hate with it. But for now M’gann Sings (screams, sobs, whimpers and sighs).


	9. Emotion

Klarion’s mind, at first glance, is incomprehensible. Impossible. Unreal, crazy, freakish wrong bad- unless you know how old he is.

(He was there. He Saw.)

It’s easiest to start at the very bottom, at the center-core of him- where the thing that makes him Him lives. It is small and mottled grey, lumpy and charred- it was once a bright and burnished Burning burnt yellow, gleaming soft. Healer kind and strong and broken now, burned alive and screaming. Wrong place wrong time just doing his job his job was to heal and he tried oh how he tried and then he burned. He Burned.

Wrapped around this is a fabric of instincts that belong to no living creature because Klarion the Witch-boy is not particularly alive, not really. Not forever. It is a scrap of shadow pulled from underneath a stain of blood, mixed with ash from a burnt-Yellow doctor-boy, and no one left to remember why, or for what.

Then a layer of instincts that  _are **not**  his _because he went into the vast and empty darkness, the Nothing between spaces unreal and un-Dreamt and he fought. And he was strong. (And he learned many things, none of them good.)

(It was in that deep and forgotten place that Klarion Became.)

(Became  _what?)_

(He was there. He Saw.)

Around that is a layer of sparks and spangles that come only from Earth- and this is where the confusion is. Because the ones who took him in on Earth are no nicer than the ones who  ~~pretended to raise~~  raised M’gann- Megan, as she prefers- but. They did not take him in out of kindness or obligation- He was taken in as a. Joke?

(He was small, and weak, and he sang such pretty songs- and when they tired of his songs, they taught him theirs, and laughed and laughed when he couldn’t sing them, and when they bored of that, he made such lovely screams.

This went on for longer than can be known.)

(Elves will break the world if they think it will make a pretty sound.)

So, it must be asked- where in Klarion is the Nothing? Aha, but you see- that is like asking “Where is the sea wet?” There is no Nothing in Klarion, because Klarion  ** _is_**  Nothing.

(Became Nothing.)

(Nothing touches the Nothing unchanged- except Sound.)

He is Nothing. He is No-one. He has lived countless lives, forgetting nothing, mind strecting squishing sliding over itself coiling winding backtracking webs and netting and clothespins lining the hamper filled with clothing that doesn’t fit anymore- Klarion’s mind is your room mid-way through summer vacation. Jumbled. Chaos- organized by some arcane and mostly non-working system reliant on memory except when your memory is what you’re trying to remember-

He was there. He Saw. (He remembers.)

 

And this Song is one he hasn’t sung in a long, long time. But. He remembers. Oh yes- M’gann doesn’t realize it, but the Thing-that-was-K’lar’on  ~~does did does will is has~~  is singing underneath her- she is falling falling breaking at the edges. Oh, how proud he is of this Bright and Burning girl, battered, scarred, but still together, still trying, even though…

No, no. Not important.

_I am here, with you._

He will is singing above her voice, beyond the place of hearing, gently-firmly pushpushnudging her ever slow and gentle away from the breaking edge, away from the snapping place where the Fire Goes Out.

_I **can hear**  you._

He is singing around her, embracing the burnt-cracked scarred and burning child before him with with with… Love? ( ~~Close enough to not hurt worse. He does not love something exotic, after all- what he loves is closer to his real self than perhaps anything else. But- no, Klarion does not love. He is the Bloodshadow Flesheater. He is Nothing~~.) Yes, call it love.

_I **am listening**  to you._

He is singing with her, shadow wisp no nearer to her than before- yet closer than perhaps any have been since before M’gann was born.

_Yes. Yes, I am **here.**_

_( ~~ **Little girl, little girl- why do you cry?**~~ )_

* * *

 

_“Never took you for a history nerd, sis.”_

_M’gann startles,_ An Alternate Account of the Color Wars _sliding out of sight even though it’s far too late. Ta’lak’s mind sends her a playful nudge, one laced with teasing comfort and a huge dollop of_ it’s okay, really. _M’gann relaxes just enough for her arms’ tym’pannum, their exposed pink organs, to relax back to their usual shape and color and size. Ta’lak huffs, mildly insulted she’d be frightened enough of him for her to become that tense in the first place. But then-_

_He sighs again, sounding tired, and slides onto the mattress next to his little sister._

_“Honestly,” he clarifies, once it’s clear she isn’t going to bother with a defense. “I just didn’t think you’d ever get. Interested. Picked a helluva place to start, anyway.”_

_The spike of denial is almost loud enough for Ta’lak to flinch, and he’s suddenly glad they’re the only ones in the ambassador quarters. “It isn’t that at all! Only, M’tnna mentioned how accurate it’s supposed to be, and how much she loved it, and I could tell that she really believed all of the stuff in it and everything she was reading and sometimes I just feel like I can’t even follow her when we_ do _talk anymore-” Her words peter off when Ta’lak’s shoulder brushes against her own, and she ends her piece with a slip of emotions brushed quietly, pointedly towards her brother. Abashed, but happy, and relieved._

_They sit in the quiet for a while, emotions not blocked off, but not projected either, and neither one wants to listen too closely and hear something that would ruin the moment._

_“For the record,” Ta’lak starts, “I’m glad you aren’t picking sides.”_

_“But you wouldn’t have been-?”_

_On cue, Ta’lak pipes a song straight into her head._

Be what you wanna be, B-A-R-B-I-E

_Embarrassed, M’gann lightly shoves her brother, and he retaliates with a brief tickling of his own. Soon, everything has devolved into a tangle of too many long limbs and joints._

_(Shortly after and for a very long time, M’gann is whoever she wants to be. However many identities that might entail.)_

There is a battle going on, between the mind(s) of M’gann M’orzz and Megan Morse and all the dozen shades of all the thoughts that meet somewhere above and between and deeply, terrifyingly and against all of her fragile silly new Martian instinct **beneath**.

No more cap on top to stop the lava flow - Hot and dangerous and bubbling like her mind and oh, _oh_ , **oh like her skin-**

M’gann M’orzz’s Green skin is bubbling, rip-rippling and squelching out because of the thing Underneath pushing upwards and outwards towards towards towards _the other one in the room_ (which one was that again? what room what other all she knows right now is that her mind was dry-cut and perfect and easy and and perfect and now it’s flooded and sick and it might be crumbling make it stopstopopopop pop pop pop _the dry places and flooding and the perfect ones are popping loudly like warming ice make it stop_ ). Answering a call.

Bones splay out of socket, tear through the skin with noise like she never makes when the change is voluntary, but is it right now nothing is technically making M’gann change but

this

_be who you wanna be, B-A-R-B-I-E_

isn’t who she wants to be

this isn’t who I am

buuuut

but but but

_but mom_

_it_

doesn’t seem to matter.

.

.

.

.

.

M’gann M’orzz (not the White monster or the ancient Burning or the lethal spy, but the sixteen year old girl) is stronger than she thinks she is.

Chaos and flames and a high, painful song that only seems to be able to mount in its _everything_ \- they reign, in her head. In the little squished thing M’gann thought it would be fun to have for a head.

In the middle, she is still there. M’gann. The one born to that name. The one that used to be bent and broken, but in all the normal ways. And things are… clearer, now.

Breathe.

((She’s still sad, but… not much else. All the anger, all the vengeance, they’re for other parts of her. The acid and vitriol have been delegated to where they would most serve a purpose. This M’gann, like sadness, serves no purpose at all.))

M’gann M’orzz, sixteen years old, knows what she wants.

What she hopes for.

(Hah, hope. (Shush, now is not the time for you.))

Her body is tired of holding itself up on its own power. She is very, very tired of holding up her own world.

She’s cried, she’s lamented her woes (and to an actual being, who is connecting with all of the mess of chaos in her head), and now it would be so very nice for.

M’gann M’orzz’s body is now spiny, and large, and long, and white.

Somewhere along the way, knees gave out. The floor may not the Hitting the Bottom, but it still allows for one to look _up_.

It would be nice to look up, and _see_ that she’s been _listened to_ and _heard._

Then. The listener could take over, like she was still a child. (She _is_ stilla child. Barely, but still. Still like this wonderful corner, away from the FireBurningdefendriptearhurt.) And her woes wouldn’t be a point of weakness held against her, and the secrets not even she knew she had could be laid bare without judgement, and

M’gann M’orzz, the sixteen year old girl, is the eye of the storm. Not a safe corner. (The two _look_ the same, and are different in every other way.) All around her are the monsters she _is_ and _might be_ and _was made into_ and _created._ Those Things never allow it but sssssshhhhh

They’ve all bled out, for the moment. They’ve sung their piece.

Right now, M’gann M’orzz of Ma’aleca’andra would like

to

(( ~~trust~~ ))

the idea stings even this part of her

admission of weakness but

maybes are important

.

The ever-mounting, Heated song chills for a moment, then coils back Underneath.

(She’s been Heard.)

A few last superficial similarities to humanity melt away.

(She’s been Seen.)

And, from the ground, she looks up.

(And Trusts.)


	10. Forces

_She really_ **_is_ ** _beautiful. Oh **shit.**_

_  
_To understand Klarion- or K'lar'on, as he was, is, was, **is and will be** \- you need to only understand two things; he is impulsive,  and he is reactionary. Together, these traits have created some of the most stupid and ill-advised decisions in the history of Klarion... which, in certain cases, is synonymous with ever.

(Snap crack brittle tap- the stretching of muscles and bones, held too long too still and all in an awkward shape; he hasn't forgotten, oh no; this isn't the kind of thing that can be  **forgotten.)**  A stretch, inside of him- a ripple in the puddle of his self- too much junk and detritus and now something, something old and sad and dead and kind and sweet and gentle and alive- alive, the saddest word of all- rising rising out of his memory ( ~~floater in the eye tears fall down and it's STILL THERE~~ ) and forcing him to... Change.

No. To **Change Back.**

 

In the room now there is a White. Rippling with emotions, tense and tight and sad- softly wheezing with effort and shame and... Trust. She is of no remarkable size- well fed, well bred, the occasional scar from youthful abandon (it's hoped (hah, hope)), her skin smooth and delicately pebbled, limbs long and graceful and deceptively strong. To K'lar'on's now off white eyes, the pinkness of her  _tiem’pafur_ is sharp against her White outer flesh; the gleam of her teeth, the delicate curl of her  _sp'tion'sa_  on the arch of her shoulder and the curves of her legs- a gorgeous tableau of feminine glory.

She looks at him through pain glassed eyes- and he feels himself, gently, delicately- because a wounded creature will lash out at any threat perceived, and he is  _not_  a threat- feels himself change back into...

 

In the room now there is a Black. Soft furred, on all fours for balance and speed and stability, tail curled long and high- gently breathing through his mouth to make absoulutely sure of... He is a bit small, as sizes go- ill fed, ill bred, too many scars to be explained as youthful abandon. His skin, where it shows through his brown black fur, is cool Black, smooth where the scars are. His face is smoother still, dead bone white- his eyes two sunken pits, his nose gaurded by a deceptivley rigid spar of smooth bone; his mouth a half-cracked jag of teeth; prongs rise from his skull like particularly macabre ears.

He slowly, slowly creeps towards her- claws gently clicking on the floor of the Cave, tail curving in figure eight above him- and gently, ever so gently, rubs his cheek against hers. His cheek is soft and smooth against her pebbled skin- her eye closed when he nuzzled her, and then opened again. Stared.

 

Moving slightly slower now- it's been a long time since he's- he curves himself, and coils himself down and around and out, until finally he is crouched by the girl; he is warm. Warmer than she is- the warm that comes from lying in the sun and basking- warm enough for her skin to mildly irides in proximity (a protective measure all Martian's have to some degree from Heat). 

_hey._

_Maybe wanna sit up?_

_maybe wanna... talk?_

_sorry sorry sorry_

(His Presence is staccato and strange- childish. Not childish at all- pared down. There is no obfuscation,  no misdirects, no forced leads or murdered thoughts- just him, in a depth children simply  _don't have_.

Feeling and being and both and  **real.**

 **Alive.** )

 

_hurt you, not hurt_

_Sang with me- happiness_

_not happiness_

_not hurt? hurting but not hurt? **sad.** Why **sad?**_

_heavy heavy heavy- too heavy gonna break_

_so **sad** Why **Sad?**_

_tell me tell me tell me?_

_wanna know wanna see_

_wanna be with **you**_

_sad sad sad Why **Sad?**_

_please tell... maybe fix?_

_maybe **help?**_

_sad sad... please no sad._

 

And then he speaks, his voice a gravelly rasp. "h-hey. d'you... wanna... talk about it?" And then he waits, quietly- waits to see if she'll consent to be Listened to.

 

* * *

 

 


	11. Branches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

And this is where things go weird. And Meta.

There are these… threads. That run all through everything. Pull one thread, and the lie someone told you unravels, shortways. Pull another, and you get an entirely new story bursting to life in your head. Longways.

Now, in the world in which things are written of- impossible, imaginary, and all around _super_ things- the people there have the power to reach through the fabric(s) of reality, and tug threads of stories away. In doing so, they create a connection- and, by expanding the thread they find they… it’s not exactly causation, nor is it correlation. Because while sometimes things in the Writers world causes changes in the Supers world, sometimes it _goes the other way_ , and no one is quite sure why. Holes, and- and  _things_ slip through. Small things. Idea sized things- smallest size there is.

But we’re here to talk about this story. This moment- because this moment, right here (last chapter, if we’re being really precise) is where things get weird. Because the thread of this story _splits_ , or perhaps _splinters_ , only it’s really more like an _unraveling_ \- Branches. In this moment, at this point in time, the story of the Boy and the Girl branches in two, very distinct directions. Three, actually- no, four. Actually, five. Sort of. No, Six. Goddammit, I need to learn to count-

Direction one: Megan does not Believe that Klarion Loves her, even though she Trusts him. And she does not Love Him back, or tolerate Him in Her space.

Direction two: Megan does Believe that Klarion Loves her, and Trusts him to always love her. And she does not Love Him back, but allows Him in Her space.

Direction three: Megan does Believe that Klarion Loves her, and Trusts him to always Love her. And She Loves Him Back.

The first three directions are the… main directions. And there are many variations on those themes, but they all flow in one way- those ways. And sometimes it’s happy and warming to the heart. And sometimes it shatters the heart and scrapes the pieces over the sad bleeding remains of your hope.

The other ~~two~~ three directions are… different-

Direction four: Klarion found Megan First, and they became the quaint little inter-dimensional hippy/hipster couple that could shatter the planet if they ever got the urge to do so- not that they would, the world’s too interesting for that.

Direction five: They were never humanoids to begin with, but actually animals with strangely human characteristics.

And, in some ways the most depressing and heartwrenching-

Direction six: They never meet at all. Ever.

 

Direction six stories usually only go one way:

I’ll spare you the details of Megan’s spidery descent into blood-drenched horror that you sell your firstborn to and never see again because she lives in a pocket dimension with trapdoors to everywhere-

I won’t tell you about Klarion’s liquefication into the ravening beast that devours cities whole and cannot be stopped by anyone, drenched in blood and deranged with the emptiness that comes from being very nearly all powerful and almost totally alone-

 

 

I won’t spare you the details of when they were both cats though, because that was too adorable. But it’s not going to be in this chapter.

Anyway.

In all the stories involving these two in a romantic way, even the ones in which they never meet, there is always a turning point- that turning point.

That Turning Point we just saw. Read. You know what I mean.

Where Megan decides if she’s going to try to Love Klarion Back, or Not- and in most cases, she decides… Not.

Of course, when she decides to Love Klarion Back- and it’s Always Her decision, because in every universe that there is this particular Klarion, and this particular Megan, as soon as Klarion is aware of her existence and has seen her for himself, he Loves her- always. Every. Single. Time.

It’s a bit painful to watch, really- because, well. She almost never Loves Him Back.

Except sometimes… She Does.

And once- only once, mind- that lead to the destruction of their universe. Once.

So now, the Bleed, where all the weird bits go- like how Bruce Wayne is always Batman, and how every era always _has_ a Batman, and how timetravel works, and why, exactly, Superman always ends up in Kansas and doesn't break Lois Lane's back when he catches her when she falls, and how Lois Lane _always_ falls, and how Black Canary doesn’t burst her own eardrums when she uses the Canary Cry, and and and- the Bleed is autonomous. It’s only job is to make sure that the universe doesn’t end.

So.

Well.

There are lots of stories that turn on the point and go down the road of Megan saying, metaphorically, No, I don’t love you back, and I never will.

But.

But but but- there are a few that don’t go that way.

Sidestories.

Edges of twigs on decaying branches trying desperately to flourish.

And it is in these that Megan said, metaphorically, of course, Yes, I do love you back, and I always will.

 

 

Of course, **finding** them is a pain.

[Catchandelier, signing off…]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Catchandelier's end notes 1] Shipping is hard. It's hard and no one understaaaaands~ but still. I like these two together. They're cute in a blood drenched way. *sigh* what has become of my life, that i ship two psychoes...[/ endnotes]


End file.
